Chinese Audio Shopping

Make sure you try the Peking duck!

"It's difficult to believe that with all of the potential problems, i.e. customs, shipping, voltage conversions, warranty, etc. there is a significant amount of savings involved to make this exercise worthwhile."

I agree with you, yet ironically, audio dealers manage to navigate all of these pesky hurdles and still turn a tidy profit.... I'm just saying.

Nothing wrong with cutting out the middleman IMO, but at the same time 'you pay your money, and you take your chances'
have fun!

I have 2 Chinese components in my system and am very happy with them. And considering adding a third shortly as I am looking at the Jasmine LP2.0SE Phono Stage.

I had a quote from a US dealer of above mentioned item and they wanted $200 US more than if I directly imported from Chinese dealer.

IMO chinese products have had an unwanted stigma about them, but I think this is slowly changing as their products improve.

Back from China. The Beijing Duck was excellent but the audio situation wasn't. I went to visit one of the "premier" high end audio manufacturers. Their products are good and nicely designed, with some interesting engineering ideas, but they aren't equipped to deal with the export market. They have 110V products and so on but they aren't really geared-up to deal with any service issues, so if I had a problem with my purchase I would probably have to send the whole thing back. I may have caught them on a bad day. My impression is that they manufacture high quality products but don't run a very good business. They will do very well in the local market, since imports tend to be quite expensive (cell phones are much more expensive than in the US), but their products aren't competitively priced for international markets, which is shocking given the high mark-ups in this space.
I think I'll stick to western companies that manufacture products there. I have the Krell S300i which I love and think is a great value.

>>I think I'll stick to western companies that manufacture products there. Hotgonzo111<<

You're a true audio patriot.